Sid: Sid Roth here with Rick Joyner and I’m sure enjoying myself I hope you’re enjoying yourself as much as I’m enjoying myself. But Rick you had an, and I started out protesting and I’m still protesting hearing I’ve been able to ask God being able to ask God any question you want any question. Well I have to ask you this and hearing the answer as clear as you’ve ever heard God in your life you said that “Jesus isn’t as religious as we think He is” tell me what you mean by that.
Rick: Yeah I think a lot of our religious rituals, now there are Biblical rituals that are very important like baptism and communion and all, but I think that we build a lot of other things to build on formality with God that He doesn’t share. I mean He came as a carpenter; He came as a normal guy even among the lower classes and walked among them. I mean look who He chose as His disciples none of them were religious. And they weren’t from the religious community and I think the Lord is far more informal. Now there are times for formality and there’s times for formality we see in heaven and Revelation and everything else, but with family you don’t want formal relationships. And with friends you don’t want…you know you start breaking down those barriers of formality. And that’s where my relationship with the Lord had been it had been mostly built on what I could do for Him and He starts speaking to me even before this encounter “It’s not as important what you do as what you become.” And we’re called to become like Him. It’s far more important that we grow by the in the fruit of the Spirit and in His nature in all of these things, but then just what we accomplish. But accomplish in those are good that is part of it too we want to bear fruit and fruit that remains. But I think that He’s more after you know a relationship. It says we were created for His pleasure.
Sid: Alright give me some practical things that you are currently doing as a result of knowing this now that maybe it will give me a better idea of what I can do on this friendship business with the Lord.
Rick: Yeah well one thing I do is every day I try to give the Lord the best my earliest freshest time to listen to Him.
Sid: That’s when I’m most alert personally at the beginning of the day.
Rick: I am too and so I try to give Him that time; I used to immediately go to the scriptures and then study and then prayer and intercession which is all good things, but this changed because to me what He wanted in His friends, a good friend is a good listener.
Sid: So what do you do? Do you play music? Do you go outside? What do you do?
Rick: Now I may walk but I may sit and drink a cup of coffee but I’m going to read anything I’m not going to do anything I’m going to sit there and say “Lord what would you like what would you want to talk about today? What is on Your heart today? What is…and I do my best to listen I tell you this is one of the toughest things I’ve done in a long time. The other night when you were at Heritage and praying for people and you said “Anyone that has trouble with their minds stand up.” And I stood up and got my arm healed by the way (Laughing).
Sid: (Laughing) I’ll tell you humbled yourself.
Rick: Yeah.
Sid: You’re normally a leader of a group to stand up he’s superman he doesn’t have a problem.
Rick: Well I was hoping to get my mind because I have so much trouble focusing ADD to the worse. And I’ve been trying to take every thought captive, every day I set about to take every thought captive make it obedient to Christ; take all of my vain imaginations and turn them into intercession and conversation with the Lord and it’s just so hard. It’s not easy, but He has been so encouraging about what it means to Him that I would just set about to do this. And so I do I struggle every morning but I feel like I’m making some progress and just be able to sit quietly before Him and just listen to Him speaking.
Sid: Now what happens when you’re sitting there and you get your laundry list of what you should do today from your mind not from the Lord what do you do?
Rick: I try to turn it off, and sometimes I go pretty long down that line before I can, when I realize that this is not the time for that.
Sid: Okay what did He…what is…alright so you have that quiet time at first. What other changes have you made?
Rick: Well if I walk anywhere which if I walk to my office or walk down stairs I try to acknowledge His presence; I try to just beware of Him…
Sid: I’m sorry help me out what do mean you acknowledge His presence tell me what you’re saying or thinking.
Rick: Well He said that He’d never leave us or forsake us. He’s with us all the time He gave us His Holy Spirit to abide in us. We’re His temple and a…
Sid: When you say “Acknowledge” though I mean you realize He’s there is that what you’re saying?
Rick: I try to realize He’s there and see Him with the eyes of my heart.
Sid: Actually try to see Him.
Rick: I try to see Him with my natural eyes and that’s what Paul prayed in Ephesians 1 “That the eyes of our hearts would be opened” not just our physical eyes. So I try to acknowledge Him and see Him and I mean this is a war that’s just going on in my now because I am so easily destructed but I’m fighting this fight. I want to abide in the Lord all the time. I want to get to the place where I’ve taken every thought captive it is the Lords. I want to think what He thinks, I want to feel what He feels.
Sid: What if you happen to like sports and you go to a football game what do you think He thinks about that?
Rick: (Laughing) Well I asked Him about that “What do you think of sports we give so much attention to sports? He said “It wasn’t a direct answer but He said He loved what we loved that was not forbidden.” Like I mean He doesn’t you know…
Sid: And so He wouldn’t want to join us in an X-rated movie.
Rick: No.
Sid: But He would join us now is there in sports in some cases become an idol?
Rick: Absolutely but you know worship has become an idol with some people they worship worship instead of worshipping the Lord. You can worship the Bible you can worship almost anything that is of God rather of God. So yeah anything can become a idol and certainly sports is an idol to a lot of people. I think a lot of Christians spend a lot time focusing on sports than they do the Lord and that’s out of whack.
Sid: Did you ask Him any questions on what’s going on in the world today with the US or anything?
Rick: Well I did, but you know these were things also that He brought up because I was asking I was trying to be a friend I said “Lord what’s on your heart?” you know. And I said “These things are on my heart but what’s on Your heart?” He did start speaking to me about America and about a specific way that our country would be awakened and would be saved. And this really…
Sid: You’ve got to tell me (Laughing).
Rick: (Laughing) Well He really did give our founding Fathers the wisdom to write our Constitution. It was divinely inspired, it’s not scripture but it was divinely inspired for a government that would enable people to be free and freedom is essential for people be who He created us to be. That’s why He put the tree of knowledge in the Garden in the first place. There cannot be no true obedience unless there’s the freedom to disobey and so there has to be freedom. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there’s liberty and He really gave this country as an example of the freedom and liberty that He wants people to have. Of course some people are going to use that liberty for evil. They’re going to chose to do wrong and all but there has to be freedom. You can never force love; you can never force devotion to God it will never be real. And but He wants this to be preserved, but the constitution is the key to the restoration of our nation. I you know virtually every problem major crisis problem that we have right now is the result of a departure from our constitution.
Sid: Now you saw some terrible things about ready to happen in America what did you see?
Rick: Well this was later I was given a dream of an on slide an invasion actually across our southern border of an evil that it was far worse than anything I’ve ever comprehended. It was an evil spirit. It was it was terrorism and it was terrorist but is far worse than ISIS.
Sid: I don’t know how you can…why was it worse than ISIS I can’t think of anything worse than ISIS.
Rick: Well one thing if you study the formation of ISIS. You know ISIS was a break off from Al Qaeda because Al Qaeda thought that these people were too ruthless.
Sid: Hm.
Rick: So Al Qaeda was saying ISIS is too ruthless and you think well that’s as evil as it gets cutting off people’s heads especially children and everything else. What I saw was far worse than that it was a sadistic evil to be cruel while it was killing people that was freaking out the ISIS and Al Qaeda the other terrorists groups. They were terrified with this terror it was so evil. I think in the dream I knew that it had come out of a deep witchcraft from South or Central America. I believe it has some kind of roots maybe from the old Mayan empires or things like this. It is terrible terrible ruthless cruel evil that is going to rise up and join with the spirit of terrorism. There are a lot of Middle Eastern groups that are setting up terror space now in south and Central America and we’ve known that for a long time a lot of them in Mexico. There target is America; well this evil rising up from South and Central America combining with that is going to be I think the most diabolical thing that the world has ever seen.
Sid: So kind of what hope do we have if this is going to happen?
Rick: Well first the first hope is that we have a King who’s above all rule, power and authority He can flip His little finger and they’re all dead. (Laughing)
Sid: (Laughing)
Rick: So it’s going to force us and I think it is forcing us I think even right now just all the news about Ebola and ISIS there’s an awakening starting. You saw the results at our place this weekend. We were expecting less than half as many people as crammed into there.
Sid: They were hanging from the chandeliers I mean that literally but they were jammed! I mean on a Saturday night I thought a lot of people would be heading home for their local churches or something.
Rick: Well a lot of people did head home!
Sid: Well people are hungry that’s what I see!
Rick: Absolutely.
Sid: What we call religion isn’t satisfying, I mean if we you know we don’t want to be like the Emperor’s new clothes, but there’s something when I see people so hungry for the reality there’s got to be a change in the church; there’s got to be a change in our relationship with God we have to become friends with God. Well after your bike ride you had an 8 hour visit to heaven tell me about that.
Rick: Yeah (chuckle) now that was a lot better than the dream about hell.
Sid: I’m sure, but you’ve been to heaven before was this different?
Rick: It was very different.
Sid: Why?
Rick: The basic ways…the times that I’ve experienced heaven before I’ve seen things like the river of living water; the river of life which by the way is living the waters alive. I never knew that but the waters alive, everything in heaven is alive. The train of the Lord’s Temple is made up of billions or millions of beings (Laughing). The species in heaven there are more species in heaven than there is on the earth many times over. And you know we tend to you know I’ve heard people say “Well I thought that only a third of the angels fell so 2/3’s are still with us.” We need to understand angels are only one type of being in heaven and they’re just the messengers. There are many we see in scripture the Cherubim, and Seraphim and all of these other many many but my experience with heaven before was seeing things like that. Seeing extraordinary things about you know the life in heaven that is so much more substantial than on earth. The communication which is so much more substantial I think because heaven was still reigning in the Garden of Eden you know there’s a communication between all things. You communicate with the plants, they communicate back but it’s not in words like we think.
Sid: So you’re not talking it’s like spirit…on a spirit level.
Rick: Yeah and you fully understand that’s why I don’t think it was shocking to Adam and Eve that the serpent would talk to them they were used to talking. I believe to communication with all beings in the Garden on a level that we just lost touch with but these were the kinds of things that I experienced before. This last visit there was far more wonderful and all the other visits I’ve had like that my thoughts of heaven is so much better than we could even comprehend, but this last one paled…made all the other ones pale in comparisons.
Sid: Tell me some things.
Rick: Okay the man thing first.
Sid: Alright.
Rick: It was all about what I call Koinonia fellowship. The fellowship was so wonderful now. Now I’ve tasted it before like I said with all the beings there but this was all about that fellowship. And at the end the Lord let me experience just a moment of being there in the same place the most wonderful part of heaven but He let me experience it being there alone and it was like Hell. He said “We have to have this fellowship; we have to have this Koinonia. You know when God said about Adam “It’s not good for man to be alone.” That’s the first thing that God ever said wasn’t good was loneness and Adam had God when He said that, think about it. Now this will ruffle a lot of religious fathers but God made man so that God was not enough for man. Now He’s the main thing we need God more than we need any other person and all other people for sure, but we need…He created us to need each other as well. And He really showed me this and He showed me the wonders and the fulfillment and just how wonderful the fellowship in heaven was. And you know every Christian I think “I can’t wait to talk to John the Baptist or Moses or Paul the Apostle.” It is going to be way better than we ever dreamed. The fellowship of heaven is…you know you can’t even comprehend it here I can’t duplicate the feelings even. But there’s still a residue in me I experienced it.
Sid: You told me about the shopping center.
Rick: Yeah.
Sid: Explain that.
Rick: Well I have to dig down a little bit to really explain it because I was provoked years ago my father-in-law was a major for J.C. Penney. He chose which shopping malls Penney stores would go in or whatever. I was walking with him and a Mall Manager one time and a little store had closed in the Mall it was huge Mall. And my father-in-law was so he was angry about it he said “How did you let the store go out of business?” And I mean his business is the Penney store JC Penney Store and he was bent at the Manager “What happened here how did he go out of business?” And later I talked to my father-in-law I said “Why would you care about that little store?” He said “We all create each other’s prosperity,” he said “I would never put one of my stores where a Belk Store is not common, a Sears and all the big anchor stores a Saks Fifth Avenue, we all have to be there together; I would never put mine as the only anchor store because we create traffic for each other and all the little shops create traffic for the big ones, we create traffic for them but we’re all in this together and we don’t like to see anyone ever go out of business.” And I was just provoked by it I said “What if the church started thinking that way?”
Sid: Hm.
Rick: What if all the mega churches would get absolutely provoked when any little church had to shut down or something! That to me sounds like heaven. This was many years ago this was over 20 years ago when I was going through this. I felt like the Lord spoke to me one time and said “If we were going to build the church that He was going to inhabit we would have to have the wisdom of the shopping mall developers.” I think that’s what it is we got to care for the little ones, work together with the other big ones; we’re all in it together so the little care for the big ones, the big ones care for the little ones and everybody cares for each other.
Sid: But what is going to stop that spirit of competition which is stupid?
Rick: ISIS and Ebola are going to help.
Sid: Oi vey. (Laughing)
Rick: We’ve got to heave God.
Sid: I’ll tell you what Rick found the key to eternal joy to bring the heavenly realm on earth and when we come back I want him to explain that key to you.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth